West Side Canvas: Deliciously Engaged

Painting and Essay by Robert Beck

Twenty-some years ago, I set up a little before noon in the back of a small, upscale restaurant called No. 9, in Lambertville, New Jersey. I was wedged between the center worktable and a metal rack holding storage containers. Dinner prep was in full swing, and the staff worked around me discussing tweaks to the evening’s menu. Despite there being no lunch service, local shopkeepers stuck their heads in and placed orders. That day they got roasted chicken.

A few years before that, I had painted in the galley of a Towboat as we pushed a five-acre raft of barges down the Mississippi toward Baton Rouge. The cook, Mary, showed me how to make gumbo for 14 (now 15) hungry men, starting with a cup of bacon fat.

The kitchen at Baumanière Les Baux-de-Provence was large. When preparing my palette, I discovered that I had lost my solvent cup the day before while painting Montagne Saint-Victoire in Aix. One of the cooks gave me a jam jar, which became my treasured default cup for years until it broke when my kit bag was thoughtlessly dropped onto a sidewalk.

My West Side Canvas Series needed a restaurant kitchen, so I asked Marion, who runs Pappardella on Columbus at 75th. She was the person I went to in 2022, when I began my Rag column and wanted to paint live in a UWS restaurant. I love their food, the surroundings, and the staff, and think of it as my local restaurant. No small part of that is how well they understand hospitality.

The Pappardella kitchen is remarkably small considering how many meals they prepare. At normal levels of business, it looks like a highly choreographed professional kitchen. When the rush happens, it becomes an art form. Think Balanchine’s Theme and Variations.

Cooks are preparing multiple plates from sauté pans and ovens. Staff come in and grab dinners, while others assemble plates themselves. A woman goes past carrying five salads lined up on her arms. Flames leap as Alberto, the Chef, swirls a pan. He prowls the front of the behemoth stove with stock pots and fire and boil and sizzle, shaking handles with a towel-wrapped hand, keeping track of orders with eyes in the back of his head.

And the orders come. Funghi E Tartufo, Orecchiette Barise, Ravioli D’Astice, Linguine Vongole. Branzino, veal, steaks, salads, sides, flames erupting, plates clanking, and in the middle of this complex orchestration is a pizza station, adding its buoyant pizazz to the performance. Just so you know, they make my favorite eat-in pizza.

Alberto asks if I’m hungry. I say no. He’s busy; I’m busy. He leans his head close to mine. “I’ll make you something; what do you like?” The place smells divine. My stomach starts to growl. “How about lasagna,” I say. They make my favorite lasagna, too. He says something to one of the cooks, who scoots out of the room to the cold case. That was the same moment when a busser arrived, swinging his tub of dishes around my side as the cook jinked the other way and darted under my elbow. I asked Alberto if he could make it to-go. He smiled, nodded, lifted some pasta off the stove with his left hand and reached into the broiler with his right.

Marion stuck her head in to see how we were doing, and placed an order of her own. Alberto relayed that to the cooks while glancing at the list of orders, and I noticed a woman at the end of the room holding up a take-out bag and nodding to me with a big smile. Dinner was covered.

Note: Before Robert Beck started West Side Canvas, his essays and paintings were featured in Weekend Column. See Robert Beck’s earlier columns here and here.

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